"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

Being primarily a keyboard person I didn't think I would be giving out 'mouse hints' too often. However this one came out in a discussion with a friend recently.

Many people use a mouse constantly, sometimes for hours while doing computer activities. That is not the only method for cursor movements. Laptops of course have the famous touch pad which works well with a few tricks, some of which I mentioned in this blog before.

There is another device that is fairly common for some users, and that is the trackball. There are two types, one that has a ball that allows cursor movement by rotating a ball situated under your thumb. The other the ball is in a position that it can be operated by your finger. Both have equivalent buttons that initiate the right and left click operations, along with the scroll wheel.

You will find comments that one is better than the other. I have only used the thumb type one and it does get tiresome after extended long uses. One thing for sure it is a very useful addition, just for the change it offers. There is no need to move your hand around at all, just place your hand on top of it and 'mouse' your hearts content.

My point here is that you can use both - at the same time. You can connect your regular mouse and the trackball at the same time and switch easily from one to the other just by moving your hand. You can plug them both in to USB, if that is the connection type you have, or a PS2 mouse and a USB trackball if your computer has those connections.

There is no interference between the two devices, and they both show up under Mouse Properties in the Control Panel so you can customize their settings individually. So if you are thinking about getting a trackball, go for it, and hook them both up and mouse to your hearts content. Me, I am going to stick with the keyboard most of the time

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License